


Vinland Saga fandom grab your heckin axes

by imahira



Category: Vinland Saga (Anime), Vinland Saga (Manga)
Genre: Essays, Formatted for Twitter, Gen, Meta, originally posted on twitter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:07:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26305354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imahira/pseuds/imahira
Summary: I've seen some confusion about Willibald's speech about "love" so I wrote a short Twitter explanation of how I see it. I could've reformatted this but I don't want to
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18





	Vinland Saga fandom grab your heckin axes

**Author's Note:**

> Note for the future there are pictures in here but if I'm locked on Twitter at the moment they won't show up.

vinland saga fandom grab and then drop your swords:  
did you  
a) only watch the anime and not understand what willibald means when he explains "love"  
b) only watch the anime and understand what he means  
c) read the manga / not understand what he means  
d) read the manga / understand

**[3 of 5 respondents answer that they didn't understand his meaning]**

okay vinland saga fandom grab ur heckin axes and get ready for one chonker of a thread

Willibald is a priest, so the “love” he’s talking about (“ai” in Japanese) is an extension of the “agape” embodied by Christ’s sacrifice. All cultures have some bleed over in the words we use to describe love, so in both English and Japanese, love and ai can both describe this.

But they’re more commonly used for feelings of familial love/friendship/romantic love. Even Canute seems at first to have understood Willibald to be talking about that kind of love—the one that makes you _prioritize_ some people over others.

But what Willibald really means is the ability to show kindness and mercy to everyone and everything. “Love” to him means the Christian principle of loving thy enemy—not harming your enemies even at the cost of your own life. (And he seems to extend it beyond humanity, as well.)

It means protecting and showing mercy to those who can’t give you anything, _just the same as you would treat your friends and family._ That’s why he says the two Viking brothers' relationship isn’t love—they care for each other because they’re family...

...because each knows the other cares for him. They would never protect Willibald or trust him, because he means nothing to them personally. Willibald doesn’t say what they have is bad or worthless, though—it’s the kind of relationship humans form naturally to survive.

Askeladd’s band might be struggling with the vocabulary word “love”, but they certainly understand feelings of friendship, affection for family, probably even romance. They just don't understand (can't understand) a man who would sacrifice himself before killing his enemies.

When he hears about Thors, though, he hears about a man who refused to harm even his enemies, even at the cost of his life. That is what he means by love. It’s an impossible thing for humans to embody because life as a human means prioritizing the people you care for...

...and inevitably this comes at the expense of those you don’t care for. Every meal you feed your family is one that could have fed other, hungrier people. Every time you sleep inside in a bed, you take up space that someone else could use.

Christ’s sacrifice was for everybody in the world, even those doing him harm, and those doing others harm, and that wasn't a sacrifice made by a normal mortal man. When a man like Thors chooses to live that way, he’s not going to last long.

Only in death can humans show the love that Willibald’s God asks us to show—harming nobody, denying nobody, giving all of yourself to the earth and the animals without objection. This is the essence of what changes Canute so much: ...

...he realizes how fundamentally unfair it is that God would demand this, and make it impossible for us to achieve. And his fear of God changes into anger. At the same time, he learns how to feel anger towards his earthly father, and becomes capable of challenging him.

Ironically, this is when he shows Willibald a true act of love, by facing down and embracing someone bent on doing him harm. Bjorn in this moment is even less able to understand love than the rest of his band; he's lost all human reason. But Canute embraces him, without a sword.

So Willibald regains his faith that "love" can be achieved by humans in life, just as Canute loses his. Thorkell compares Canute to Thors, and the narrative also parallels him to Thors in that he becomes the leader that Askeladd wants to follow.

He still doesn't believe himself that "love" is something that we can reach, but he was able to go beyond Thors and save his own life through an act of compassion. (Although humanity's baser impulses do interrupt the scene in the end.)


End file.
